


It'll All Turn To Dust And We'll All Fall Down

by verucasalt123



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Lots of Cursing, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Post-Apocalypse, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verucasalt123/pseuds/verucasalt123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world had to end sometime. The Winchesters just didn’t know they’d still be hanging around to watch. Dean and Sam fuck their way across the desolate landscape of what’s left, clinging to each other in the face of having lost so much. But there’s hope where you least expect it. </p>
<p>Art by the amazingly talented thruterryseyes. </p>
<p>PDF - http://www.mediafire.com/view/?lregk6hwqs7l39n **If you read the pdf, I'd really love it if you'd come back here to leave a comment**</p>
            </blockquote>





	It'll All Turn To Dust And We'll All Fall Down

Honestly, I never thought the end of the world (the _real live end of the world_ ) would be like this. And who would ever, I mean seriously, ever thought that those fucking Mayans were right? Exactly right down to the very first day that it started. 

 

There was no ball of flame raining down from the Heavens (almost casually, I wondered what was left of Heaven, whether or not anything there was capable of tossing a comet or a holy bolt of lightning or whatever in our direction), there was no giant tidal wave that wiped out either or both of the coasts of North America, there was no earthquake that knocked Japan into the ocean, there was no meteor that destroyed giant portions of the Earth.

 

_Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,  
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear_

 

It was just this…the gradual decline of the human population due to famine, pestilence and war. Old buddies of ours, clearly having recovered from the loss of their fingers. Hell, they’d probably even got their rings back after my spectacular failure at Stull. Dean still refused to consider it a failure, considering my last-minute grasp of control that landed me and Adam (Michael, whatever, he’d sure looked like Adam when I grabbed his arm) in the Pit, but I’d meant to end Lucifer, not just trap him in the Cage. I didn’t do that, so I still counted it in the “lose” column as far as my incredibly long **Ridiculous Stunts Meant To Save The World** list went. You know, like how _I’d set the motherfucker free in the first place_ , because I thought some demon bitch who I happened to be fucking and drinking was smarter and more trustworthy than my own brother. Yeah, trust your drug pusher over the brother that’s been taking care of you since you were an infant, genius move. Come on, it’s not like “Sam Winchester is a moron” is some kind of goddamn news flash by now.

 

War came first, and rained down like no one had ever seen before. The term “world war” was obsolete now, after everything that had happened. On December 21, 2012, it started with India and Pakistan, nukes to nukes, and no matter how bad everyone thought that might be when they’d speculated about the possibility, it was worse. So very much worse. Millions dead within the first day, and that was just from the detonations. Iran decided it wasn’t going to miss out on the fun, and launched its first atomic weapon at Israel the second they got the operation up and running, Israel retaliating immediately, and there you go, millions more, just gone in an instant. 

 

Pestilence got its chance then. The fallout from the radiation created so much illness it was almost unfathomable. The consequences were spread far and wide. People with radiation sickness died slowly and painfully, as did the ones with missing limbs and horrific burn injuries and who didn’t have access to nearly enough doctors or medicine to tend to them properly. Even the ones whose immune systems had just been weakened by the poisoned air helped things along, falling prey to what would have been minor illnesses, then spreading those diseases while travel had still been possible. One person with an out-of-the-ordinary strain of influenza traveled from China to Australia, and a daisy chain of deaths from the flu virus killed tens of thousands within a span of a few weeks in both countries. A Palestinian woman tried to escape to South America not knowing she’d contracted smallpox, and another epidemic wiped out well over three hundred thousand people in less than a month. Rivers and lakes everywhere were turned toxic, leading to record-breaking outbreaks of malaria, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, even E. coli. Once rare but deadly diseases such as Hantavirus and Ebola, fucking _leprosy_ were now commonplace, especially in lesser developed countries.

 

Famine had been on deck, and now its opportunity had come. With so many people sick and dying and dead, there were nowhere near enough able-bodied adults or even children left to tend to crops. Of course, there wasn’t much left to tend now that you could barely see the sun through the haze of dust that covered the sky. In North Korea and several African countries, where people were already starving to death every damn day before the bombs were getting dropped all over the place, the numbers of those who died from malnutrition multiplied exponentially. The few crops that were left to tend were ruined by the water supply which had been poisoned with radiation and filth. Food supplies dried up more quickly than anyone anticipated, even in the United States of America, where Pestilence had already dug in his claws. People were dying of starvation on every inhabited continent. 

 

As it turned out, the folks who fell prey to Pestilence and perished as a result of a disease were luckier than those poor unfortunate bastards who slowly wasted away and died from hunger. Even luckier than those were the ones who just went _poof_ when the bombs hit. For them, at least, it had been instantaneous, simply blinked out of existence instead of having to deal with prolonged suffering before they…what was it that Shakespeare had said in Hamlet? Shuffled off this mortal coil. As good a description as any, I figured. Sometimes I wondered, when my mind sought out poetry, whether or not any of those people had, indeed, slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God. I’d always loved that one, though I had no recollection of President Reagan’s reference to it after the Challenger disaster that occurred when I was such a small child and never came across it until college.

 

It was fairly clear that not many people had paid attention to the importance of corn and its many uses until the United States, China and Brazil all had a failed crop at the same time. Food, fillers, ethanol, sweeteners, oil…Gone gone gone. The _land of plenty_ had turned into the _land of not much at all_ in no time. 

 

Some governments lasted longer than others. Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Finland – they all held out for a good couple of months, at least. Obviously, the countries who had initiated all the bombing (and those geographically closest to them) lost their governments almost immediately in the aftermath of the retaliations. Initially, the governments that were still functioning in some way pled with their people to conserve, to persevere, to take in and assist their neighbors, and for just a little while, it had worked. Until those people who were used to having whatever they wanted got sick and fucking tired of having damn close to nothing and being expected to share what little they had with others. Then the governments slowly broke down, as a result of a restless constituency, officials dying off or being assassinated, or just due to giving up. The military and law enforcement presence, which had been making at least an attempt to maintain stability of some kind where they could, eventually disappeared. The televisions blinked off and the radios broadcasted nothing but static, and there were no more encouraging voices, only the inherent **need** to keep what you had and get more at any cost.

 

War was back in the game, now on a smaller scale. In every country, every city, every tiny little small town, people started turning on each other. The ones with weapons had a clear advantage over the ones without, and they used that advantage at every opportunity. So you had to shoot someone to get at their supply of canned food, or you had to beat someone to death so you could take their generator. None of it mattered anymore. It was every person for him or herself, for their children, their spouses, their parents. For the most part, civility and compassion were missing from society. Now and then you’d hear about someone still holding on, taking in children who’d lost their parents, trying to grow their own food, but those instances were getting to be fewer and farther between by the day.

 

The result was absolute chaos. Obviously. I saw it coming, so did Dean. We kept our heads down and hid out for the worst of it, silently using the few resources we had to keep a record of where we were likely to find food, how to recognize people who were sick so that we could avoid them, and catching word every time someone we knew got shot to death by a neighbor or perished from some ridiculous illness because they were injured and couldn’t get proper medical treatment in time to ward off sepsis or had contracted some crazy strain of the common motherfucking cold. One of our last contacts from the hunting world was taken out when lightning struck her house, started a fire, and she couldn’t get out in time because her smoke alarm and sprinkler system had been connected to the electricity that no longer functioned in the town where she lived.

 

_Why does it always have to be water?_  
Why does it always have to be holy wine?  
Destruction   
Of all mankind 

 

Death – well, we’d met Death before, and he’d never seemed all that interested in wiping out humanity, which was a shocker at first, before we got to know him. More interested in pizza and pickle chips and soda, in fact, surprisingly enough. Death wasn’t really so much into the whole “ending the human race” thing as his fellow Horsemen were. He was more like a mentor who encouraged us to look closer, dig deeper, carry on. I’d never had the courage to ask him why, and Dean had never had the chance (though he certainly never lacked the courage). We didn’t see him, though, through all of this loss and chaos and world-ending activity. I always figured he’d show up at some point, but just like so very many other things in my life, I’d been wrong about that. We just watched while the whole fucking world came crashing down around us and Death never bothered to show. And shit, who could blame him? So much reaping of souls in such a short amount of time, it was unlikely that he had any desire (or any opportunity) to visit my brother and me.

 

Nor did God, for that matter. I was more surprised about Death’s absence than I was about God’s. That in itself was a testament to how far I had fallen. It illustrated graphically how separated I had become from that boy, that teenager, that young man who still prayed every day and honestly believed those prayers were heard by God, or Angels or Saints or Whatever. What a fucking crock that had been. I’d have been better off spending that time brushing up on my knife-throwing skills or my lessons in how to exorcise demons for all the good it did. When everything was on the line, the two times before this when the world was going to end, God never lifted a heavenly fucking finger to help any of us stupid saps who believed in His Worthless Ass, just left us to the mercy of angels who thought they were doing what their Father would had wanted (if He hadn’t just fucking **disappeared** ) and demons who would do anything to stop them. 

 

_I ain’t gonna sleep, I don’t wanna dream_  
About the things that I used to need  
I ain’t gonna cry, or go on living lies 

 

Castiel probably knew the answers to all the questions I had – not that I ever ran out of questions – but he was gone now too. Christ Almighty, I missed Castiel more than I had ever thought would be possible. Not only because his knowledge would have been helpful, but because he was Cas, our Cas, and we loved him despite everything that had happened, and he wasn’t here anymore. I didn’t know where he was, and Dean never wanted to speculate, probably because of their ‘profound bond’ or whatever it was that the two of them had. I hadn’t had the courage to ask about _that_ either, because Dean would probably have ignored me for days or punched me in the face if I had. Castiel’s unexplainable and mysterious departure had hit me hard, sure, but it had knocked Dean over like a fucking freight train, and I didn’t know how to help him with that. 

 

Getting punched in the face would not have especially bothered me, I had been pretty sure at the time, but the chance of Dean not speaking to me was not a risk I was willing to take. It wasn’t like there was anyone else around who would be all that interested in talking to me. Every now and then we ran into a straggler, some person alone who’d lost everyone they’d loved. I always offered for them to join us, and Dean always discouraged them from doing so.

 

He won every time. No one ever joined us. Life was me and Dean, on the road, like we had always been, except without any hunting to do. There were no monsters left, no ghosts, no witches. No people to save. Well, no way to save people, anyway. Not from this. No angels or demons, either, as far as we could tell. Just the two of us, no Bobby to call for advice, since Bobby was dead and cell phones didn’t work anymore. 

 

The loss of Bobby, the man we’d considered to be almost like a father to both of us, was excruciating. Since there was no way to contact him by telephone, we’d simply made our way to Singer Salvage Yard near Sioux Falls, hoping for the best. Maybe he’d just been trying to stay under the radar, like we had. Pulling up to his house, the familiar sound of the Impala’s tires kicking up gravel, it was clear that we would not find what we were looking for. Bobby was on the porch, rapidly decomposing, his shotgun and ball cap stuck around what was left of him. We couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or just attacked, but it didn’t really matter. He was gone. Dean and I had carefully gathered his remains, including the trucker hat, and placed him on a pyre out in the yard. The last thing Bobby would have wanted would have been to return as a ghost or vengeful spirit, or anything else he’d spent years hunting; his corpse had to be salted and burned. After attending to that horrific duty, we went inside and saw that his place had been somewhat _methodically_ ransacked by whoever had been there. All traces of food or blankets or towels or medication were gone. 

 

Whoever had been there had decided Bobby was worth killing to get their hands on anything in his house that might be useful to him (or her or them). It must have been someone desperate, since Bobby had a reputation in the small town for being a cranky drunk with guns and guard dogs. We hadn’t looked for the dog, just hoped he’d had a chance to run away. Bobby’s unidentified murderer didn’t know about the panic room, though. I had my own exceptionally unpleasant memories of my time locked in that room, and I was certain Dean didn’t particularly want to go in there either. But we made our way downstairs, took the blankets, bottled water, canned soup and two pillows, bringing them out to the car before going back to the pyre.

 

Two pieces of wood were all we needed. Dean nailed the makeshift cross next to Bobby’s ashes. Yeah, maybe neither of us had much faith left, but the cross was instinctive him and to me. I grabbed a black Sharpie from the glove box of the car and recorded his name and the year of his birth and death on the horizontal beam, since neither of us could remember his birthday (what the hell kind of people were we anyway? He always remembered ours) and there was no way for us to determine the exact date of his death.

 

I went back inside and grabbed a blue and white cap of Bobby’s to keep as a reminder of him, of everything he’d done for us over the years. How many times had he pulled our asses out of deep shit? Or talked sense into us when one or the other of us had been acting like, as he would have said, ‘idjits’? I had no doubt that neither Dean or myself would have still been around to watch the world fall had it not been for Bobby Singer looking out for us since we were kids. Dean snatched up, unsurprisingly, Bobby’s journal and an envelope of photographs. 

 

The vision of him attempting to protect his home and getting killed as a result was more than I could handle. Certainly more than Dean could handle. His death left us both with a hole in our hearts that would likely never be filled. Once we left, we just kept driving, but still grieving in our own silent ways.

 

None of that stopped us, at least for a while. Months passed and we kept moving, kept driving, kept finding places that had gas to fill the Impala’s quickly-emptying tank, kept finding places we could sleep at night. Neither of us wanted to face or admit or talk about the reality of the situation: it really was the end of the world. We’d been ready for it in years past; we’d planned for it while the seals were breaking and there was a war raging in Heaven, but not now. Right this minute, day, hour, week, month, I hadn’t been ready for it; Dean hadn’t been ready for it. But then, whenever we thought about the end of the world before, we figured we’d be gone with everything else. Maybe in a blaze of glory, like martyred superheroes, or some equally ridiculous scenario. Hell, that one time, I’d even tried it myself. We didn’t think we’d still be there to watch. Dean had caught that one glimpse into the future, courtesy of that asshole Zachariah, years ago. But this was nothing like what he’d seen on his trip to the “Here’s What Happens When Lucifer Wins” future, because we didn’t think Lucifer caused any of what we were seeing now.

 

And it was fucking depressing as all hell. Yeah, I know, maybe “depressing” isn’t a strong enough word to describe witnessing the collapse of civilization as I’d always known it, but it was all I could think about at the time. Those sweet, sleepy little small towns that I’d adored my whole life were mostly empty. All the big, sprawling cities that Dean had hated his whole life were war zones, blocks of people who were holding out bordered on all sides with blocks of people, even little kids, who were lying dead in the streets. 

 

_And I'm not missin' a thing_  
Watchin' the full moon crossin' the range  
Ridin' the storm out 

 

It didn’t take long before the electricity failed. I knew it was coming, just wasn’t sure how long it would take. Some places it was a month, some places it was two. Heading west was my crazy idea, this notion about how the Hoover Dam maybe could keep the lights on out in that part of the country and possibly even for a good long time. Dean was skeptical, but he agreed. It was warmer out there anyway, and neither of us were willing to pass up a chance to get someplace where we weren’t freezing all the damn time. 

 

A major sacrifice had to be made, though, before our trip out west could commence. It was a long, long drive. Thousands of miles and surely many detours due to impassable roads and cities that weren’t safe to travel through. Dean’s baby got maybe, **maybe** , on all highway driving, 15 miles per gallon. She had to be left behind. I don’t think I’d ever seen my brother more inconsolable as he was at the moment when he agreed with my assessment on that particular situation. He loved that car more than just about anything in the world, but he wanted to stay alive as much as I did and he knew there was no way we’d be able to find enough gas to keep her moving all the way to the West coast. 

 

Unloading the trunk, deciding what to keep and what to ditch, was a tough job in itself. Yeah, there were no more hunts, but we kept Dad’s journal and obviously as many weapons as we could reasonably carry. 

 

I didn’t object when Dean gingerly placed Castiel’s folded up and moldy coat into the “keep” pile. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even comment on it, on account of that whole face-punching thing I mentioned earlier. 

 

We’d always traveled light as far as personal belongings, a habit ingrained in both of us since childhood. I didn’t need my laptop anymore, since there were no internet connections to be found, but Dean didn’t say anything when I kept it anyway. One duffle each of clothing and toiletries, the bare minimum; that was what we’d always had, since we were kids, so no changes needed to be made there. An envelope of family photos that we’d gotten from Dad and from Bobby’s place was tucked into the side pocket of Dean’s bag, and a map, along with a list of likely sources of food and fuel was tucked into the side pocket of mine. 

 

I kept Bobby’s cap and a couple of books. Not lore, just literature. Dean kept his cassettes. 

 

I wrenched the plastic Army man out of the ashtray on the back driver’s side door and stuffed it into my pocket.

 

In the end, the Impala got a hunter’s funeral. Dean couldn’t stand the thought that someone would find her, take her, or strip her for parts, so one night on the side of a back road in the middle of rural Alabama, we pulled over. Dean was already openly crying, and I was having a hard time holding back my own tears. He poured the last of our rock salt and a liberal amount of lighter fluid all over her interior and, after spending a few moments just leaning against the frame having a quiet conversation with her, he stood back and threw his favorite lighter into the open front driver’s side window. 

 

_Although these changes have come_  
With your chrome heart shining in the sun  
Long may you run 

Both of us stood there and watched the car burn, taking what small comfort we could in each other’s embrace, for almost an hour before we finally turned and got into the tiny diesel-fueled Audi that we’d hotwired and packed up. Thankful that our father had taught Dean to drive a car with a manual transmission, and that Dean had taught me, we started moving. As spoiled as we were by the automatic we’d been used to driving all these years, it didn’t take long for us to adjust to shifting gears and using a clutch.

 

It didn’t have a cassette player, but I figured we’d be able to find one somewhere along the way. Also, I could plug my laptop into the car’s cigarette lighter to keep it charged, and I’d long before downloaded lots of his stupid fucking Metallica and Motorhead and Zeppelin (ok, so maybe some of the Zeppelin was pretty good, actually) onto my hard drive, so Dean could still have the comfort of his favorite music even though it was coming out of the tinny-sounding speakers of my computer and not from a tape being played loud and proud in his beloved Impala. Just that little scrap, a small crumb of our old life, if I could give it to my brother, I would, no matter what it took.

 

Other people might not have understood what a blow it was for us to lose that car, but that was because the vast majority of other people didn’t grow up in a car, didn’t think of a car as being their home. Both of us, a few years apart, had lost our virginity in the backseat of the Impala. Dean when he was fifteen with Carla Palmer, me when I was seventeen with Jeannie Kline. Over the years, as children and adults, we’d experienced so much in that car that I almost choked at the loss. As kids, we had opened Christmas presents in Dean’s ‘baby’, slept next to each other in the back while Dad drove us to the next town, held pressure on each other’s wounds to keep blood loss at a minimum until we could get to the closest hospital emergency room or urgent care clinic. As adults, we had laughed until we cried, sang along to Bon Jovi waiting for Dean’s deal to come due, screamed at each other until our throats were raw. Hell, our first kiss was across the bench front seat seven months after he’d come to get me from Stanford. Let someone else try lighting the house they grew up in on fire and watching it burn to cinders because it’s a fucking necessity for survival, and then they can tell me how they feel about _that_.

 

The first overnight stop we made was in what was left of a small town just about an hour or so over the Texas border of Louisiana, having crossed the Mississippi River and kept on going until we just couldn’t go anymore. We stopped a little over seventy miles after we crossed the state line, in a place that used to be called Tyler, a college town that had once boasted a population of somewhere around two hundred thousand. As far as I could tell, it was practically empty now. But we knew there was a place there where we could put some diesel in the stupid little car, which I was growing to hate more and more as the hours passed. Yeah, maybe I’d made fun of Dean a little bit for being so attached to the Impala, but at least I didn’t have to scrunch my legs up quite so much as I did in this ridiculous Audi that was clearly not designed for a man with a body the size of mine.

 

As a kid, I’d always wanted to be bigger than my brother. It pissed me off that he was always faster when we were running, because of his longer legs, and that he could beat me in sparring every time due to his superior muscle mass. He was four and a half years older, though, which I didn’t consider much at the time. I just wanted to be better than him at _something_ , other than school shit, because he didn’t even care about that, and neither did our dad, really. But after I turned fifteen, all of a sudden I was all long limbs and hard angles and it took me a while to get used to it. When I tacked up a four-minute mile against his four and a half minute mile just a couple of months shy of my sixteenth birthday, I thought nothing better than that could ever happen to me in my entire fucking life. Dean was stunned, our dad was quietly proud, and I was exultant, unending in lording it over Dean that I was faster now. My growth spurt didn’t suddenly make me stronger or more agile, though, because it was another six months before I pinned him to the ground while training in the summer heat of Nebraska three months after I turned sixteen. I reveled in the victory, while at the same time feeling something else, something distinctly non-brotherly about having his body trapped under mine, not knowing at the time that he felt the same _something else_.

 

Right now, I was mainly pissed at being almost six and a half feet tall and trapped in this dumbass “good gas mileage” car just so that we could fucking live.

 

The abandoned house we found on the outskirts of town had no electricity, which we already knew would be the case, but it did have the luxury of a fireplace in the living room, and we took advantage of that immediately. It was clear that the former owners of the place had long since fled (almost surely thinking they could find someplace safer, most likely). After gorging ourselves on bags of chips and canned sodas we found in the kitchen, we laid down on the floor and enjoyed the warmth of the fire. It wasn’t long before we were searching out the comfort of each other’s touch, which we hadn’t allowed ourselves in quite some time, considering that most of our efforts had been concentrated on more pressing matters like _not dying_. It was quiet there, and warm, and we weren’t hungry or irritable. So it felt like the natural thing to do, turning to each other, my arms running around Dean’s back and pulling him close, capturing his mouth in a messy kiss, all spit and tongue. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt the tension start to melt away in his shoulders. Of course, that only spurred me on, taking the chance to strip him of his shirts and run my tongue over his chest, biting and sucking at his nipples as he whimpered and moaned. It was not a surprise when he took over control of the situation, moving to take off my shirts and push me over onto my back. It almost always ended up like that anyway. Not every time, but yeah, mostly. So I lifted my hips easily when he unbuttoned my jeans, making it easier for him to pull them off. 

 

Neither of us bothered with underwear anymore, it’s not like we got a chance to wash our clothes all that often. When the electricity failed, we realized that Laundromats were now useless.

 

Once I was completely stripped, Dean stood up to take the rest of his clothes off, and I reveled in the sight of him standing above me like that, strong and naked and ready to make me feel the only thing that had given me any real satisfaction in years. Settling back down on his knees in the space between my eagerly spread legs, he took my aching cock into his hand, pulling tightly with no lubrication except for the pre-come that I was steadily leaking. We’d managed to hold on to one bottle of lube, halfway empty, but it hadn’t been used in a while. Dean snatched the bottle out of his bag and coated his fingers with it before releasing my hard dick and teasing around my hole then just diving right in with two fingers. My hands dug into the rug on the floor, searching for some kind of way to still myself against the onslaught of the pain, pleasure, stretch, burn, ecstasy. There was no way I was going to stop myself from fucking myself right into it, pushing against the intrusion, especially after he hit that spot, Jesus, that one fucking spot, it made me insane, turned me into a babbling idiot, incapable of forming any words more coherent than _fuck, Dean, please, more, harder, more, pleeeeeassssse_. His satisfaction was clear by the smirk he graced me with as he removed his fingers and slicked up his own rock-hard cock. 

 

“Want it, Sammy? You’re all open and wet for me, whining like a whore, come on, tell me you want it.”

 

Every fucking time. He never shut up during sex. **Ever**.

 

It took everything I had to force my brain into coming up with a response, but I did it. “ _Yes_ , yes, Dean, please, want you inside me, fuck me, come on….”

 

“Say it again.”

 

Goddamnit. I knew exactly what it was that he wanted me to say again.

 

“Please. Please, Dean.”

 

And that was all it took, as he pushed my knees up and farther apart, sliding inside me until he was buried as far as he could go. It was less than thirty seconds before I gave him the signal, the brief nod of my head, telling him to move. And move he did, Christ, almost all the way out and then back in so fucking hard that it took my breath away for just a moment. Only until the next thrust, where I got back enough breath to yell, loudly. Dean was so very pleased with that. Not that he was going to ease up, clearly, the pace had been set and it was all I could do to hold on while he fucked me right into the floor, speeding up and slowing down, all unpredictable and making my brain even less functional. 

 

“You love it, Sammy, love me to fuck you so hard, you know you do, I want you to say it.”

 

When no response was forthcoming, on account of that whole non-functional brain thing I had going on, he stopped, buried all the way inside of me and grabbed a handful of my hair. My head jerked up automatically, and my eyes opened again of their own accord, sense memory of what he expected now. 

 

“Say it, baby boy. Come on. You can do it.”

 

“I love it…I…love it when you…fuck me so…Jesus…so hard, I love it when…you fuck…me…”, that was all I had and thankfully it was good enough for him to start moving again. 

 

“Gets me so hot to hear it, Sammy, been my little whore for years and I never get tired of hearing you say how much you love it. How much you love being a whore for me. Do it. Do it now.”

 

How in the hell was he still able to form full coherent sentences? I had to find a way, get some temporary control over the brain-melt, give him what he wanted. My dick was so hard it hurt and Dean wasn’t even touching it. 

 

“Love being your whore…yours…love it…I’m yours, a whore, your cockslut, Dean…all for you…”

 

That response seemed to satisfy him for the moment. Dean shut up and started pounding away again in earnest, pulling the weak moans and broken-off sobs from my throat until his rhythm faltered just a bit. He put his hand on me then, jerking me hard, rough, and I knew. He hated to come before I did, he would hold out as long as he possibly could to make sure it didn’t happen. He certainly wasn’t disappointed this time, because before I knew it my orgasm was ripped right out of me, and it’s possible that I all-out screamed when I felt my release falling all over his hand, over my belly, even onto my chest. Less than two minutes later, he stilled above me for just a moment, his mouth going slack and the whispered “Sammy” on his lips letting me know he had gotten there too. It had been far too long since we’d allowed ourselves this little time of peace. 

 

_I taste the sparks on your tongue_  
I see angels and devils and God   
when you come 

For just a few minutes, we stayed there like that, cum all over the front of me and steadily leaking out the back of me at the same time. When Dean finally pulled out I couldn’t hold back a ridiculous whine, but he stayed right there, laid his head on my chest, wrapped his arm around my waist. (Yes, this was the he post-sex cuddling that he’d deny to his dying day, and fuck that, because he did it every goddamn time. Almost. Not when it had been grudge-fucking or angry sex, because those times he always just got up and walked away to clean up. Sometimes he even had the decency to throw me a washcloth, but not usually.) Tonight wasn’t like that, though. Tonight it was us, just the two of us, real and vulnerable and in love and afraid and thankful that we’d gotten another night like this. 

 

Neither of us knew how many more we had left. 

 

After a while, though, we did move, we cleaned up, put on sweats to sleep in and found a bed where we could lie down and get some much-needed rest. We couldn’t stay here, obviously, because we couldn’t _stay_ anywhere, not yet, not while everything was still crumbling down around us. 

 

In the morning we indulged in maybe half an hour of kissing and touching before resigning ourselves to the fact that moving on was a necessity. 

 

Once we had managed to pry ourselves out of bed, we realized that it had been a lucky house we’d found, though, for sure. Boxes of granola bars, a whole case of bottled water, a few more cans of soda, dry cereal, even a few big packs of commercially-made beef jerky. We packed up as much of it as we could, along with a few blankets, and hit the road again, across the dry expanse of Texas. 

 

We’d both traveled back and forth across this particular state several times, but it wasn’t the same as before. We couldn’t stop to get a beer and hustle pool when we felt like it. There were no cases to work, no places we had to stop. So it seemed like a much longer trip this time around. 

 

Finding a place to fill up again on diesel around Amarillo, Dean triumphantly emerged from the ransacked convenience store showing off a small bottle of Astroglide and a shit-eating grin. We considered stopping for the night but were both feeling just a bit restless, I guess, and stood outside the car, smoking pilfered cigarettes from the mostly-empty little store by the pumps. We’d never engaged in that particular pastime on a regular basis, especially not Dean. I’d smoked fairly often in college (Jess had tolerated it, didn’t nag but surely never approved either), and even after that, during the time when Dean was in…well, while Dean was not there with me, gone and leaving me as a burned out husk of what I’d been before. It’s not like Ruby was going to bitch about it. Though I knew he’d indulge occasionally (he’d admitted that he had briefly picked up the habit while he was living with Lisa. Lisa, like Jess, didn’t approve but just banished Dean to the outside of the house when he wanted a smoke), I also knew he’d frown on anything that he perceived as ‘not good for Sam’, especially after that one time he’d caught me behind the school when I was sixteen, sucking on a Camel Light, and smacked it out of my hand angrily, so I pretty much avoided smoking during the years we were together. But now…well now was now. I kept trying to come up with other words for “end of the fucking world” but I didn’t like “apocalypse”, due to its past connotations, and it seemed a bit soon (and also kind of pretentious) to use terms like “dystopia”, so screw it, it was the end of the fucking world, and it was likely that one or both ( _please please NotGodWhatever, please let it be both_ ) of us would get taken out at any time, so lung cancer wasn’t on top of our list of Things To Worry About. 

 

Demons, however, still were on that list, no matter how long it had been since we’d run into one. So when Crowley suddenly appeared, leaning casually against the post less than ten feet from where we were standing, I froze, cigarette in mid-air, while Dean dropped his smoke and clenched both his fists. 

 

_No wealth, no ruin, no silver, no gold  
Nothing satisfies me but your soul_

 

“Boys, boys, boys, you needn’t be frightened of little old me. Just dropping in to check on you.”

 

Dean was the first to speak. “Bullshit, Crowley, what the fuck do you care what happens to us? And how did you even find us anyway? Where did you come from? We haven’t had the trail of a fucking lowlife demon in months. Oh, and-”

 

Crowley raised a hand and silenced my brother in an instant. His power was still terrifying, after all we’d seen and experienced. Granted, he’d helped us more than once, more than twice, even. Still, he was who he was. King of Hell and all that.

 

As if he sensed my thoughts, he turned to me immediately after having shut Dean’s mouth with no more than a wave of his hand. “Don’t let me stop you, Sam. Go on and finish your smoke.”

 

Without another thought, I brought the cigarette to my mouth and took a long drag, never moving my eyes from the demon’s face. “What do you want?” I asked, the words coming out in a cloud of smoke, knowing there had to be something. 

 

“King of Hell, huh? That’s what you just thought?” Crowley shook his head, looked down and then back up at me, an expression I’d never seen before on his face. “Hell’s a whole different place now, Jolly Green. Fucking flooded is what it is, a backlog of damned souls like you can’t even imagine. Don’t have to worry about crossroads demons anymore, voluntary collection of souls has been put on permanent hiatus. King of Hell gets to delegate, so I’m delegating. I needed a break, and figured I’d see what the two of you hardheaded blokes were up to.”

 

“Surprised not to see our names come up on your list, huh?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, lumberjack, the two of you aren’t going to Hell, not again. You’ve done your time, and you’re off-limits to me and my kind. When the life leaves you or your git of an overblown brother, your souls will be going in the other direction. Pearly gates and all that.”

 

The shock on my face as I blew out the last of my smoke must have registered, because he continued. 

 

“Don’t give me the incredulous look, Sam. There’s still a Hell, I can tell you that for certain, which means there’s still a Heaven, too. And Dean, if you have something to say, go on ahead, I’ll give you another chance.”

 

“You sanctimonious motherfucker, what the fuck do you think you’re doing showing up here like-”

 

“All right, I changed my mind. You can shut up again”, Crowley responded, silencing Dean once more.

 

“I have the same question. What are you doing here? What do you want with us?”

 

“You won’t believe me, and that’s fine, but I’m just trying to help. Think back, I know we don’t have the most romantic history, but you must recognize that I’ve had a soft spot for the two of you kids as long as I’ve known you. Against my nature as well as my better judgment, but it couldn’t be avoided. And you won’t believe this either, I know, but I’m sorry about Bobby. You know I liked him too. And no, he’s also not ‘on my list’, obviously.”

 

He wasn’t lying, at least about some of it. He had done more than he had to for us, and for Bobby, even if he had selfish motives to begin with. All I could come up with was, “We’re not _kids_.”

 

Crowley just laughed, that sarcastic and cutting chuckle lacing his smooth Scottish accent, threaded with barely shrouded ill-intent that I’d heard so many times before. “All right, Sam, you’re not kids, you’re grownups, you’re men, you’re fucking each other, have been for years, and cut the wide-eyed look, everyone knows. Least the ones in my circle know. Hell, Bobby knew, too. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. He didn’t give a shit about it. Anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed, the world you live in has changed significantly in recent months, hasn’t it?”

 

Another Bobby comment, and I was more shocked by this one, but I tried to keep myself under control as I continued the conversation. “Yeah, fine, and how much did you have to do with that?”

 

He laughed again. “You actually think I could pull off something like _this_? I’m flattered, honestly, but no fucking way. Lucifer, maybe, but even that’s fairly unlikely. The Horsemen stepped in to take advantage but they didn’t start it, either. This was all you. I mean, not you, but **you**. What I’m telling you is, it was just your run of the mill regular people with a taste for destruction. Demons didn’t start this, and neither did angels. Awwww, Dean, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject there. Your Castiel is fine, I swear to you, back in his home and surely missing the two of you badly. Possibly one of you more than the other”, he had the decency not to look right at Dean as he said it, “but not suffering or turned to burnt wings or anything. Do you have something to say?”

 

Dean finally got the power to speak again, but his words were not nearly as heated this time. “He’s okay? Cas? He’s not…you know, like, dead or anything? Not hurt?”

 

“No, Dean, not dead, not hurt aside from wishing he could be back with the two of you non-caped crusaders. Take my word or don’t, that’s not my decision, I’m just telling you what I know. Little Castiel is safe, he can’t return here but he’s in good hands and keeping company with some other folks you know.”

 

“Like who? Who’s with Cas?” Dean asked, this time without much angry force behind his words. I’d already lit another cigarette, content just to listen to their exchange.

 

I’d been jealous of Castiel, that much was absolutely true. As much as I loved him, I knew he felt something for Dean that didn’t belong to him, and there were times I was afraid Dean had returned those feelings. Nothing was ever acted on, but some days while Cas was with us, no matter how much I had loved him, I felt a kind of emotional betrayal, like Dean was maybe giving Cas a piece of himself that belonged to **me**. Maybe it was true, maybe not, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d never know, and that now it didn’t matter anymore.

 

“I can give you names. Some are names that I know – Bobby, John, Mary. Some I don’t – Pamela, Ash, Jessica-”

 

A gasp must have escaped my lips, and Dean was at my side immediately, holding me up before I realized I’d even started falling. My heart felt like it had a fist around it.

 

“Ah, Jessica. She must have been one of yours, Sam.”

 

Dean lashed out again. “You shut your fucking mouth about Jessica. Don’t you goddamn _dare_ say anything to him about Jessica.” I could almost feel the heat radiating from my brother in his possessive mode, ready to stand up to the King of Hell to protect my feelings. Fuck, I loved him so much, so much, and he loved me, he did, he loved me too.

 

_But I'll never do it better than I do it with you,_  
So long - So long - I would do anything for love,   
I would do anything for love 

 

“Stand down, big brother, I never meant to upset anyone. I told you, I only came to see whether or not the two of you were still holding your own up here.” 

 

“Well now you know. We’re still alive, and I think that counts as holding our own considering the circumstances”, I responded, trying to shake off how horribly it wrong it felt to hear Jess’ name come from Crowley’s mouth. The thought of her being in Heaven with other people I loved was comforting enough to tamp down at least some of my anger. “Where have you been? What have you seen?”

 

“Everywhere, Sam. I’ve been all over the world. Some places are worse than others but basically it’s a knee deep pile of shit no matter where you look. No lights, no fresh food, no clean water, no place where people aren’t murdering each other in cold blood for _things_.” He must have recognized my eager expression, because he continued, “Ah, there’s the smart one, brain as big as that mop of hair, figured it out, have you? A useful source of information right here, belly-crawling demon that I am”, he responded with a smirk.

 

And he was right, of course. No one knew anything about what was happening outside of their direct line of vision, because there was no communication, no way to see, no CNN screens with brave reporters checking in from the front lines with rolling tickers across the bottom giving you one-sentence snippets of other news.

 

Dean asked him, incredulously, “And you’re going to share information with us? In exchange for what? You already said you couldn’t get our souls back.”

 

“For nothing, Dean. For _nothing_. Because I can. Because I want to. Because I’m a bit on the soft-hearted side for a monster and I’ve gotten a little attached to you over the years. Doesn’t really matter. But if you’ve got questions, ask me, and I’ll answer them if I can.”

 

I jumped on that immediately, of course. First things first. “How many are left?”

 

“Oh, plenty. Almost a billion, I’d guess.”

 

Dean and I looked at each other with wild, confused expressions, then back to Crowley. “Plenty? That’s _plenty_? It’s less than twenty percent of the world’s population four months ago! Jesus fuck, I knew it was bad, but…”

 

“Yes, I know, it sounds awful, and before everything levels out, there will be less. After a while, though, there will be more again. The world will be a different place. But it will still be here, for whoever’s left to do what they will to it. Don’t forget, I’m much older than you think. The earth’s population, animal and human, has been decimated before. Sometimes through natural circumstances, sometimes, in the case of humans, through their own stupidity. Maybe they won’t make the same mistakes again.”

 

“Levels out?” Dean asked, clearly intrigued. “You mean eventually things will just get to some kind of baseline, like a _this is the new normal_ kind of thing?”

 

“I reckon so. It’ll be a while, though, can’t say how long, but not overnight.”

 

I thought this might be a good time to find out if my theory had been correct. “Do you know if the lights are still on west of here? Electricity?”

 

“Yeah, good guess, Moose. Hoover Dam. For now, at least. Vegas strip’s still lit up like Christmas. Though I don’t guess the rats and corpses are playing much blackjack these days. But yeah, all over there, a few spots in Arizona, parts of Nevada and California, more people alive and even healthy on account of the electricity. Water’s still bad, but if you’ve got the means to boil it it’s safer for you lot. I’m not saying it’s pretty, but at least they’ve still got that. No way of telling how long it will last, of course.”

 

For just a minute I breathed a sigh of relief. If the trip out west wasn’t going to get us anything, then we would have sacrificed a lot for nothing. 

 

“So maybe we’ll be safe there for a while if we can make it, Sam. Right, Crowley?”

 

Crowley responded to Dean’s question with the hint of a chuckle behind his voice. “There’s no ‘safe’ anymore. I can tell you that without any uncertainty. People are still killing each other, dying off from illness and starvation every day, even out there. But you’d rather be in the western United States than in Haiti or Russia right now, at least you’ve got a fighting chance. Especially the two of you. You’ve got weapons, I’d guess you would probably make decent hunters, you know, like, hunting for food. Times like these maybe you want to thank your Daddy for the survival skills he taught you.”

 

 

Dean tensed up again, and Crowley held up his hands in a peace-making gesture. “Sorry, sorry, no more mentioning anyone either of you ever knew, all right? I’ve got to go anyway. Maybe I’ll see you again. One thing before I go, though. If that’s the way you’re headed, see if you can stock up on insect repellant.”

 

Both of us fixed him with a confused look before he explained. “West Nile virus. Nasty outbreak in California, spreading to Nevada and Arizona, New Mexico too. Mosquitoes aren’t just little pests anymore.”

 

And then he was gone just like he had appeared, back into thin air, leaving us both stunned and speechless for a minute. Dean was shaking. I offered him another cigarette, but he turned me down. I started in on another one anyway. 

 

“You think he’s lying?”

 

“About what? The Heaven thing? The electricity thing? The population thing? The mosquito thing? He kind of sprung a whole bunch of shit on us all at once, Dean.”

 

“Any of it, I guess, all of it. It’s not like he’s never gotten his jollies by fucking around with us before. We can’t just assume…”

 

“No, I don’t think he was lying. There’s nothing in it for him. He sure doesn’t need us for our entertainment value anymore, considering the state of the world. Man, I didn’t think there were so many gone. So fucking many. I don’t even know how to get my brain around it.”

 

“Hell, to tell you the truth, Sammy, I didn’t think there were so many left. Guess since we’ve gone out of our way to avoid contact, I kind of figured almost everyone was gone.”

 

After a few minutes of just standing in silence, we got back in the car and started moving again. I fired up the music player on my laptop and I chose all kinds of different songs that seemed fitting at the time. While Dean may have hated some of them on principle, he still listened to the lyrics. 

 

_Come on baby...don't fear the reaper_  
Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper  
We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper  
Baby I'm your man... 

 

That one got a chuckle out of Dean, since he really did like Blue Oyster Cult. Then his expression turned serious, like he was really thinking about Reapers, and how likely it was that one of them would be coming to collect one or both of us soon, if there were any left, the pretty ones like Tessa or the Crypt-Keeper ones we’d seen in other places.

 

After a couple more hours of driving, we stopped again, near a town that advertised itself as Logan, New Mexico. Pre-end of the world population about a thousand, post-end of the world population looked like approximately zero, unless you counted the coyotes. I swear to Chuck I saw them alongside the highway, and so what if Dean thought I imagined that shit, I know I saw them. We found one place with diesel and filled the gas tank again. Then we spotted the dark sign for the Budget Inn Motel, and pulled into the empty lot. It wasn’t hard for me to pick the lock on one of the doors (one of those things I’d prided myself on when we were younger was that I was a thousand times better at lock-picking than Dean was), and there we were, just like old times. A single room, a non-working television, two beds, just like most of the places we’d spent the night for the past seven years, and plenty of nights before that too. We lit a few candles so we could see, and took a shower together in the hopes that maybe there would be a little water left that would be at least lukewarm. And it was, for about four minutes. As the water started running cold, we quickly finished rinsing off and hopped out to get dried into bed. 

 

Our earlier encounter with Crowley left us in no mood for fooling around, but we did fall asleep in the same bed, wrapped around each other like blankets. It took a while, though, for both of us. Talking to the demon had raised more questions than it had given us answers. Some of the answers were great. Castiel in Heaven, Jessica in Heaven, surrounded by people I loved, people who loved me. 

 

_Would you hold my hand_  
If I saw you in heaven?  
Would you help me stand  
If I saw you in heaven? 

 

No matter what had developed between Dean and me, he never showed even one single sign of jealousy or resentment that my grief over losing her had lingered after all these years. Maybe it was because _this_ part of our relationship hadn’t started while Jess and I were together, or maybe it was because he still held on to that little spark that had hoped I could find some kind of ‘normal’ one of these days, some life that didn’t involve as much hunting as it did having kids and a house and a picket fence and backyard barbecues. 

 

We both knew now that neither of us would ever have kids. The two of us, sorry-assed Hell-scarred incestuous sinners, we’d be the very last of the Winchester line. I wondered for a moment whether or not Chuck would have inserted that little gem into his so-called “gospels”. We never had found out what had happened to him. Probably dead, unless that whole prophet thing worked in his favor. Maybe we should have checked, but there were higher priorities. I felt bad, though, honestly, thinking of him, and of Becky, and of those folks we’d met once who’d thought we had this really fantastic life. They were good people, and they were gone now, I was sure of it, just like almost everyone else was gone now.

 

What the fuck, though, Dean had tried to make that whole _normal_ thing happen for me. He did, he let me go, he didn’t come for me at Stanford until he had to, he could never have known what would happen as a result. Dean would have been happy to have those couple of days with me and then gone on with his life, as long as he knew I was safe. And he’d even tried it himself, after Stull, only after I forced him to promise me. He put his best effort into making a life with Lisa and Ben, a regular job, beers with the neighbors, family game night on Fridays. If only I could have stayed away from him then, maybe he could have had it for real, with more time to adjust. But circumstances being what they were, it didn’t turn out that way, and there was no changing any of it now. Ben and Lisa, even before they had both died of tuberculosis months ago, didn’t even remember Dean, as a result of Castiel’s little trick. Finding out about that, I’d been about as useless at comforting him as I had after Castiel disappeared. Dean went silent for a week, at least, and I just let him have it. I hadn’t known them, either of them, we’d only met a handful of times, and when I had come to take my brother away from them, I wasn’t exactly _me_. So I kept my distance, let him grieve in his own way. Nothing I could have done or said would have helped. It would have been like a minister who’d never met the decedent giving a eulogy at a funeral. Worthless. 

 

So yeah, both of us had a lot on our minds and it was a good long time before we finally fell into a restless sleep, made possible only by each other’s presence. 

 

_Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in,_  
Like waves of sweet fire, you're safe within  
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in,  
And carry you over to a new morning 

 

In the morning, we both woke with the sun and figured we’d just start all over again, another day like all the rest. But I felt like I was physically stuck where I was, lying in bed with Dean’s head resting on my chest. I moved my head so I could kiss his temple. I knew he was already awake, and I suspected he might not be quite ready to move just like I was. So we stayed there, silent, holding on to each other. Eventually he tipped his face up toward mine and kissed me, _really_ kissed me, like he hadn’t in a while, slow and soft and gentle. 

 

As usual, there was a natural progression from kissing to touching and licking and (always always) fighting for control. Dean seemed to be happy to hand it over to me, though, this time, without more than a token amount of resistance. We’d slept without clothes on, so at least the chore of undressing was already out of the way. I stayed where I was, lying on my left side, facing my brother, and held out my palm in front of his face. He knew instinctively to lick it, get it nice and wet before I moved that hand down to grip his cock and stroke slowly, the friction eased by his saliva and his pre-come. After only a few minutes of that and my other hand carding gently through his hair, I was already eliciting soft moans from him, almost whimpers, though I’d never call it that and he’d never admit to it. I pushed him over so he was on his back, and lowered myself between his legs, replacing my hand with my mouth. Licking and sucking for all I was worth, I could feel him getting closer to the edge, I could hear him panting, whispering my name with other nonsense “ _Sammy, so good baby, your mouth, fucking perfect, so good to me baby boy_ ”. I didn’t want it to be over too quickly, and this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind anyway, so I pulled off his cock and leaned over to his bag to retrieve that bottle of lube. Slicking up my fingers, I teased him and opened him up, prepped him so very slowly, despite his pushing back against me and clearly wanting more. This one was mine, so I took my time. Once I was achingly hard and Dean was nearly incoherent, I handed him the lube and told him to slick me up, which he of course did immediately and with enthusiasm. 

 

I switched it up on him, though, and from the look on his face I knew he was surprised when I told him to move. I settled myself down on the bed and positioned him across my lap, his thighs resting on either side of mine. 

 

“Ride me, Dean. Let me watch you.”

 

He hesitated for just a moment before reaching for my dick and guiding it toward his entrance. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t bottom all that often, and him physically being on top even though he was the one getting fucked seemed to make the situation more comfortable for him somehow. A sharp exhale escaped his mouth as he slid down gently, taking all of me slowly, inch by inch. I let him go at this own pace, it wasn’t as easy for him since he wasn’t used to being the one with a cock up his ass. He adjusted, though, and I could feel his muscles relax around me as the moments passed.

 

“Yeah, just like that”, I said, grabbing onto his hips tightly. “Move when you’re ready. I want you to fuck yourself on my dick, Dean.”

 

And I guess since he was used to being the dirty-talker, my words caught him off-guard. I could easily see the flush that spread from his face to his chest before he lifted himself up, just a little way, then back down again. I shifted my hips to get a better angle and knew when I’d hit his prostate dead-on from the way he wailed and his eyes rolled back in his head. Dean’s thighs were starting to shake with the effort, so I took pity on him and held him in place, fucking up into him and there was no sound to be heard in the room save for our flesh colliding and the loud, unabashed moans of pleasure falling from both of us. 

 

As much as I would have loved for it to last forever, that was clearly not happening as I felt his balls tighten against his body the same way mine were. I reached up a hand between us and started stroking him again, faster and more insistent this time. Though neither of us were very much aware of anything else, I realized that we’d come at almost exactly the same moment, and that wasn’t something that happened very often. Sure, it was usually pretty close, but _this_ close together, almost simultaneously, it was like a gift, a rare and amazing gift, especially since we’d both managed to keep our eyes open and trained directly on each other even as we were taken over by orgasm. Dean almost immediately slumped over and face-planted next to my head, his arms and legs shaking. I was fairly certain that I had blacked out for two or three seconds. 

 

“Jesus, Sammy, you fuck me so good. I love you. Love you.”

 

“Love you too. We gotta get up, Dean, we have to keep moving.”

 

“I don’t want to. Can’t we just stay here forever?” He’d deny to his grave that he was whining, but seriously, he was whining. 

 

“Here, with no lights or hot water or…”

 

“Other people.” He finished my sentence for me, completed my thought before it worked its way from my brain to my mouth. Dean was like that. He could do that sometimes, actually a lot of times, but for some reason it still surprised me when it happened. 

 

Then, of course, I felt guilty and like I was being insensitive. “Aw, Dean, come on. You sound like your feelings are hurt.”

 

“I don’t need other people. But you do. No, no, don’t give me those eyes, you know what I mean. You need contact, connections, company. Not just mine. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like I think you want to go get married to some random chick and leave me behind. I know we’re the most important people in the world to each other, but that doesn’t mean we’re exactly the same. We’ll find the place that’s right for us, and if that means we end up part of a community, I don’t think it would be bad. Sometimes I worry, though…”

 

“If people will accept us? If we’ll have to lie about being brothers or hide the fact that we’re sleeping together? Yeah, I know, I worry about it too, but you heard what Crowley said. For whatever that’s worth. What’s left of the world is a different place now, and whatever societal norms everyone used to hold onto so tightly may not be that important anymore. And I’ll tell you right now Dean, if we can’t find a place like that, a place where we can just be who we are, then it’s just going to be you and me, Grizzly Adams-style, living on a mountain somewhere, and fuck whoever else is left. Their loss for missing out on how kick-ass we are.”

 

And he believed me. I could tell from the look on his face, he knew I was telling the truth. If we ran into a town where folks were trying to start over, and they couldn’t accept Dean and me exactly as we were, we’d just move on. I wasn’t going to spend the whole entire end of the fucking world pretending and hiding. 

 

“Beards and everything?” he joked.

 

“Hell no, no beards, Dean, Jesus. Gross. Like you could ever grow a beard anyway.”

 

Dean’s displeasure at my remark was expressed as usual, with him smacking the back of my head and telling me to shut up.

 

Either way, it was time to start moving again, no matter how comfy and sated we were there in that dusty motel bed. We threw our bags back into our tiny car (which I’d secretly started referring to in my brain as the **NotImpala** ) and headed west on I-40, stopping again on the other side of the state in Gallup to fill the gas tank. After referring to the map again, I figured we should get off the interstate and head northwest. It was the best way to test out my theory and Crowley’s statement about the electricity still being generated by the Hoover Dam. Randomly, I pointed at a little town near the border of Arizona and Utah. “Maybe we can make it that far by tonight.”

 

Dean took the map and studied it carefully. While we were stopped to fill up the tank, as usual. He got carsick if he read or even just glanced at a map while the car was moving. Neither of us had ever said it but we both knew it to be true. That was why I’d always been the navigator. And the one to take the blame if we got lost. Of course.

 

“Are you in a hurry to get there?”

 

“No, I just figured it might be a safe enough place to stop for a night. You have another idea?” But then, looking over his shoulder at the map, I knew exactly what he was thinking. 

 

“Dean, we don’t have any hurry for anything anymore. You wanna take a detour? I know you always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. We can go, we won’t even have to pay for some stupid guided tour or donkey ride or whatever the fuck else they used to have there. We can just go. See. Is that what you want?”

 

And fuck all if he didn’t look _embarrassed_ , like there was some kind of shame attached to wanting something. Jesus F. At least he got far enough past it to answer me honestly. “Yeah. I do. Would you mind? I know we have to conserve fuel for the car, it’s okay if it’s not practical or…”

 

I cut him off there with a hand gripped tight into his hair, kissing him with what I hoped was all it would take to convince him I was being sincere. “That’s where you want to go. That’s where we’re going. It’s four, maybe five hours from here. We’d be there by sundown, we could watch the whole world move from light to dark, sitting on the hood of this shitty car. Then we could sleep a while, and get a good look at it in the daylight, stay as long as you want. Whatever you want, Dean.”

 

So that’s exactly what we did. By the time we got there, the sun was just starting to get a little low in the sky. We had plenty of more time to see everything in the natural light. On the south rim of the canyon, there was a little building with a sign calling it “Hermit’s Rest”. We went inside and raided the place for a few bottles of water, then took a little walk. The view was amazing. I couldn’t believe this was something I thought would just be some lame tourist trap, something Dean had built up in his head as an unfathomable wonder. Because it was, it was _fucking amazing_ , there was no other descriptor I could come up with. The spot we’d picked gave us a spectacular view of the Colorado River running through the depths of the canyon, though from so far above it looked like a trickle of water rather than the mighty force it really was. There wasn’t much conversation. After half an hour or so of looking, walking, quiet exclamations of how beautiful and perfect it looked, we sat down. 

 

When I realized that Dean was crying, I put my arm around his shoulder and, finally, fucking **finally** , he gave in, leaning into me, resting his head on my chest and letting the tears fall. I knew what those tears were for. So many reasons, so much to grieve. He’d lost what we’d all lost, the world we used to know. But he’d also lost Castiel, he’d lost Ben and Lisa, he’d lost the car that had been our home, maybe he’d even lost what he thought he knew about himself. But here we were, in a place that he’d always wanted to visit, and we were together, we still had each other, which meant there was hope. 

 

It was dangerous. Hoping. Wanting. Expecting. So much on the line. Having hope makes you vulnerable in ways that almost nothing else does. No one knew that better than the two of us. We’d put so much effort into _not wanting_ anything, since whatever we wanted had always been taken away, by our own actions, or by the directions of things out of our own control. Dean once hoped, before he knew about Castiel’s betrayal, that he’d find a way to make me whole again after I lost my soul and got it back. I once hoped, when I was still an ignorant teenager, I could get away from hunting and forge a new path for myself. We’d both hoped that we would find a way to hold off the apocalypse. 

 

As the sun disappeared, I kissed the tears from his face, and we went back to the little building we’d found before. On the floor, on top of and under a mountain of blankets, we held on to each other and fell asleep. The last thought I had before I was pulled under was that I’d made sure Dean had gotten to do something he’d always wanted to do. It was a nice way to let go of the day. 

 

When we woke, we raided the small structure where we’d spent the night for whatever we could find. It had a snack bar, so we took cans of soda, bottles of water, protein bars, bags of peanuts and some souvenir t-shirts and sweatshirts advertising Grand Canyon, along with a few more blankets. Remembering what Crowley said, we snatched a few bottles of bug-spray, too. We were still headed to that small Arizona town, but it was only about three hours away, so we stole a few more precious minutes to appreciate the wonder that was before us. I couldn’t call anyone on my cell phone anymore, but I could still use it to take photos, so I did. Pictures of the canyon, pictures of Dean. One close-up of both of us as I held the phone in front of us. That one was a bit off center but it was my favorite. I hoped our car would last long enough for the built-in battery charger to let us keep it a while. 

 

Then we drove north for an hour, got onto US-89, and headed toward the town of Page, Arizona.

 

About fifteen miles outside of our destination, we saw it, and both of us were shocked, even though we had hoped for it. Dean was rattled enough that he stopped the car right there on the highway. 

 

Lights.

 

It was still daytime, but it had been long enough since either of us had seen electric lights that we recognized them even in the bright sun of the early afternoon. It was just a little filling station, the gas tanks knocked over, the store obviously looted, but the sign advertising “SHELL” was lit up. 

 

And _oh my fucking NotGodWhatever_ , my hunch had been right. Crowley had told us the truth. There was power out here. Electricity. My brain couldn’t move fast enough to process all the possibilities. 

 

Dean whispered a low and almost breathless, “Sam…”

 

“I know. Shit. I know, Dean. You wanna go in there?”

 

“Let’s just keep going until we get to this town. See what’s there. I know you said there’s a place that might still have diesel. So let’s check that out, okay?”

 

“Yeah”, I replied, still completely stunned. “Sure, yeah, let’s go.”

 

He got the car moving again and twenty minutes later we passed the sign for Page, population about seven thousand. A mile or so past the city limit, we pulled into a Texaco that was like a truck stop, a store attached, lights blazing from the sign above the door. At the diesel tank, we stopped the car and got out, mentally crossing our fingers. And hell yeah, there was still some left. Enough to fill up the **NotImpala**. Not sure what else we’d find, we filled up the five-gallon plastic tank in the trunk as well. This little piece of shit could go pretty fucking far on five gallons, which was the only advantage it had over the (R.I.P.) **ActualImpala**.

 

I’d kept the stolen pack of cigarettes we’d gotten the night Crowley showed up, and decided this would be a good time to have one, rolling my window halfway down and feeling the breeze on my face. The slightly dizzy but exhilarating sensation from the nicotine wound its way all around my brain and body. When I offered one to Dean, he declined. “You know that can get to be a habit, Sam. I don’t want to develop an addiction for something I might never get again. I’m not bitching, I’m not giving you a lecture, I’m just saying maybe you should think about it.” If we’d still been in the Impala and I’d lit up a smoke, I would surely have gotten much more than a lecture on the subject. Probably something closer to a punch in the jaw and possibly a shove out of the moving vehicle.

 

But I did, I thought about it, though I still finished the cigarette, some generic brand that I never bothered to really pay any attention to. What Dean had said had made sense, it really did. It was dangerous to risk an addiction when there was a real possibility that picking up a pack of smokes might not be a possibility anymore. We both knew I was prone to addiction in general, from past experience, and Dean was too. He’d barely touched a drop of alcohol for as long as I could remember, turning it down even on the rare occasions that we’d found some. 

 

We’d headed to that particular town for a few reasons – it was close enough to the Hoover Dam for me to test out my theory, and it was a small enough place that we figured it would be deserted by now, like the other small towns we’d stopped in while we made our way west across the country. Instinct had us heading to a residential area, where we were more likely to find empty houses with food and water we could appropriate. 

 

The first stop we made was in a tiny neighborhood with modest homes that were similar but made original by the many Native American designs and decorations on the windows and doors. Wind-chimes, dream-catchers, paintings of traditional art adorned almost every house on the street. All was quiet, though, so we made our way up to the last house at the end of the road, and opened the unlocked door. 

 

Completely unprepared, we found ourselves staring down two children in the front room, holding rifles that were pointed directly at our chests.

 

Instinctively, both of us put our hands out, palms forward in a ‘we’re not here to hurt you’ gesture. The kids didn’t put the guns down, though. The older one, a girl around thirteen or so, spoke first. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

 

I cleared my throat and spoke up, hands still out in front of me. “We’re just traveling, kid, heard the lights might still be on out this way, wanted to check it out. That’s all. We didn’t come here to hurt anyone, honest.”

 

Dean followed that up with, “It’s nice to see some other faces, even though they’re not exactly friendly.” He threw out one of his trademark grins, and the younger child, a boy who didn’t look to be much older than eight, seemed to relax marginally.

 

The girl shot back, “You would have taken things from this house if it was empty.”

 

I figured there was no reason to lie. “Yeah, we would. Most houses we find are empty, and it’s not like people can just go to the grocery store anymore. I kind of figured that’s what most people do. I guess not here, though.”

 

“No. Not here.” She lowered the rifle, though. “I’m gonna take you to meet Miss Patricia and you can talk to her. If you’re just passing through, we might be able to help you.”

 

So the kids weren’t on their own. There were more people here in this town. Dean was clearly as curious as I was. “All right, we’ll go wherever you want us to go, just don’t shoot us, okay?”

 

The boy piped up then. “We’re not gonna shoot you.”

 

“Hush, Max. Let’s just go.”

 

The four of us left by the back door and crossed a couple of lawns that almost certainly used to be well-manicured. Dean and I followed Max and his yet-to-be-introduced friend (sister maybe?). Within five minutes, we stepped onto the front porch of a small ranch house with vinyl siding and a wooden swing. The girl knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting to be invited in. 

 

The first thing that hit us was the smell. Food. Food _being cooked_. Something with tomatoes and garlic and Jesus, it had been a long time since I had experienced that, and Dean was almost drooling. 

 

The little girl’s shout knocked us out of our temporary bliss. “Miss Patricia! I got people here! Two guys! Come see!”

 

I heard the woman before I saw her, muttering from the next room. “Now, Amy, what’s all this fuss-” She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw us. I didn’t blame her, honestly. It was obvious that they didn’t see strangers often, and here were two very large male strangers in the company of these two very small children. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was of average height, slim, a little gray hair but not much, maybe in her mid-forties, I guessed, and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. 

 

“Go into the kitchen, you two. Let me talk to your new friends.” Her tone was hard, her emphasis on the word ‘friends’ cutting and sarcastic. The kids made themselves scarce and she motioned to the couch, clearly directing us to sit. Which we did, immediately. 

 

“What do you want here?” Her question required an immediate answer, and we told her basically the same thing we’d told the kids, which was the truth. 

 

“We almost never see people, ma’am”, I offered. “Looks like there’s a community here in this town. We didn’t know. Figured it would just be deserted just like every other place we’ve been. We didn’t come to cause any trouble. If you want us to leave, we’re gone, just say the word.” I regretted it, my thoughts still lingering back to that whole _cooking food_ thing. 

 

“Are you armed?”

 

Dean answered that one. “We’ve got weapons in our car. It’s fairly reasonable, I think. But no, nothing on us.”

 

“I have a pocketknife”, I supplied, trying to be as transparent and non-threatening as possible. “In my jacket. You can take it if you want.”

 

“No need. Keep it. We don’t get a lot of visitors, you’re right, this place is barely on the map. That’s probably what’s kept us safe here, if anyone’s close they tend to just pass on by. But the few of us who were left after…everything…we stayed, made the best of what we had. People have joined us over the past month or so, though. Mostly people intending to pass through, then deciding they wanted to stay. We don’t turn people away unless they’re dangerous. I’m pretty damn good at spotting dangerous when I see it, and you two look like you’re just pretty damn near the end of the line.”

 

“I guess you could say that”, Dean responded, quietly. “Been a long time since we’ve seen anyone’s face but each other’s”, he added with a smile, reaching out to touch my arm gently. The woman picked up on the contact immediately and made no comment other than the slight raise of one eyebrow. 

 

“Tell you what, I’ll introduce you to some of the others, you can stay for dinner, decide if you want to get back on the road after that. Sound fair?”

 

**Fair**? If there was anything good or holy left on this earth, the words “stay for dinner” were definitely among them. 

 

“Thank you, ma’am. Thanks so much. It’s really generous-”

 

She cut me off there. “It’s Patricia, not _ma’am_. And maybe the two of you ought to introduce yourselves.”

 

Well, this was it. Dean and I looked at each other and decided we’d just do it, even though she had clearly already picked up on our affection. “I’m Sam Winchester, this is my brother, Dean.”

 

All right, so that one got both eyebrows raised. “Sorry guys, I figured you were, you know, together, like, together, didn’t realize you were family.”

 

Shockingly, Dean was the one who responded to that comment. “We’re both. If that’s not okay, we can go now, I’ll understand, this isn’t the kind of thing most people approve of.”

 

Sighing heavily and shaking her head, she said, “What’s left of us here, we ain’t most people, boys. Most people are dead, remember?”

 

And yeah, we did remember. 

 

I gathered enough courage to ask the question that had been poking my brain for the past few minutes. “If you don’t mind me asking, ma-, Patricia, how many people live here? In this town, I mean, in your community?”

 

Her response almost knocked me unconscious. “Sixty-four, including kids. We had sixty-five, but we lost a young woman from complications after childbirth last week.” She sounded like she was used to losing people, but hadn’t yet grown hardened against the experience.

 

“That many? All in one place? I never imagined…” Dean looked awestruck. “What do you do? How do you-”

 

“You’ll see. Anyway, we’ll have some company in half an hour or so. It’s your decision whether or not you want to tell anyone anything well, you know, personal about yourselves. I’ve got to get the bread in the oven. There’s plenty of pasta for two extra mouths to feed. You both look a little on the thin side to me.”

 

With that, she left the two of us alone, sitting on the worn plaid sofa, staring at each other like idiots. There were so many things going through my mind, equally as many going through Dean’s, but the first and foremost was the last thing Patricia had said.

 

“Food.”

 

“Cooked food. Real food.”

 

I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over to kiss him, a chaste kiss, but with bad timing. The little girl, Amy, chose that exact moment to enter the room.

 

“So, are you two, like, gay or whatever? It’s okay, I know about people being gay, I know what it means. No big deal.”

 

I wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed, but simply answered, “It’s a little more complicated than that, but I guess, yeah.”

 

“Hmm. You don’t look gay.”

 

“What does gay look like?” Dean asked her, a smile on his face. 

 

“Uh, you know, like, eyeliner or fancy hair or clean clothes?”

 

That got a chuckle out of both of us. 

 

“Patricia invited us to stay for dinner. Is that all right with you, Amy?” I asked, genuinely interested in her response.

 

“It’s fine, you can meet some people. Maybe you’ll be gone before morning, maybe you’ll stay, doesn’t much matter to me. Might matter to some other folks, though. You’ll see.”

 

With that enigmatic comment, she was gone as quickly as she had appeared. 

 

 

Relegated to the sofa, and not willing to get up without being asked, Dean and I just sat and waited until we heard a knock on the door. Patricia came out and opened it, welcoming in two men and one woman. One of the men appeared to be in his early sixties, one around our age, and the woman somewhere in between, late-thirties or so. Before they made their way too far into the room, Patricia spoke. “We have some visitors. Just passing through, maybe. Dean and Sam (I wondered if she omitted our last name on purpose), this is Erica, her younger brother Lucas, and their father, Micah. Y’all, Dean and Sam showed up here today, Max and Amy found them and I’ve invited them to stay for dinner.”

 

Micah was the first to speak, though all three of them still looked a bit suspicious. Not surprising, I guessed. “Nice to meet you two. Where you from?”

 

Now that wasn’t an easy question to answer, but Dean felt up to the task. “Kansas, sir, originally, but we’ve been traveling for years. Came here from Alabama over the past few weeks.” He stood then, and extended his hand to the man, who shook it without hesitation. The exchange gave me the courage to get up and introduce myself properly to the three people who were examining us. 

 

The young woman spoke next. “So, just staying for the night?”

 

Patricia broke in there. “Bit soon for questions like that, Erica. Let’s sit down, dinner’s about ready.”

 

There was an easy air of familiarity about the whole process, Patricia handing Dean and me plates and silverware to set the large table in the dining room, Lucas and Erica setting food on the table, Micah sitting expectantly at the table and the two children teasing each other until they were told to pipe down and take their seats. There was a silence once everyone sat down, and I could tell Dean was nervous that they were about to say grace or something. But Micah just raised his glass of water and welcomed their visitors before they all tucked in to their dinner, Dean and I both trying _very_ hard not to just inhale every bite of pasta with red sauce and fresh baked bread on our plates. 

 

Lucas spoke then, finally. “Been a while, huh? Most folks who end up here have been living on beef jerky and canned soda for a good while.”

 

“That’s exactly what we’ve been living on”, I responded with a chuckle, between bites. “This is incredible. Thank you, again, I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful we are for this.”

 

After dinner, Dean and I insisted on washing the dishes. Water was fetched for us by the kids from a well in the back of the house and clearly hand-made soap was provided to us along with a washrag and a hand towel. 

 

By the time we joined the others in the living room, the children had been sent off to bed. 

 

“If y’all want to stay the night, there’s a place down the street. Tiny, but it should do fine for the two of you”, Patricia said, “just for tonight.”

 

“Thanks so much”, responded Dean. “We’d really appreciate that.”

 

I couldn’t help myself any longer. “How are you all doing this? I haven’t been able to imagine a group of people this large being able to stick together through everything, in the same place, making things work. There must be a pretty amazing talent pool here.”

 

Erica laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could say we’ve got a fairly widely varied number of skills represented here. Caught on to what was happening early enough to hoard the non-perishables. We grow our own food, mostly vegetables, but there are some orange and tangerine trees we’ve been able to save. Not much meat, because the chickens are better suited to producing eggs, but we get a little now and then. And there’s a beekeeper who’s lived here all his life and made it through…well, you know. Everything. So we get honey for sweetening our food and easing sore throats. He’s almost eighty, but he’s passing on his skills to some of the younger folks. There are a few cows left, we keep them for milk, though, wouldn’t think of sacrificing one for meat when the milk is so much more useful. It wasn’t easy, but a couple of us have learned how to care for those few that we still have.”

 

I digested all this information as I was digesting the wonderful food we’d been treated to. Right at that moment, I had lots more questions, though. Dean, as he generally was with a full belly, was happy enough to sit and listen. 

 

“So, sixty four people? Right here in this little town? And you’re all…what? Working together? Trying to make a go of…whatever this is, what we’ve got left?”

 

At that point, Lucas spoke again. “You said ‘we’. Like, you know, like you were one of us.”

 

“Sorry, Lucas, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous. I just meant we, like, whoever is still alive.”

 

Micah responded in all honesty, “It’s all right. Not like we couldn’t use a couple of more able-bodied young men around here, if the two of you do decide you want to stay. So, you two obviously didn’t just meet up on the road. What’s the story there? Known each other long?”

 

Again, the question. And just like we’d agreed before we had gotten there, the answer would be the truth. “We’re brothers, sir. Known each other since Sam here was born when I was four years old. But…” His courage seemed to run out there. I was happy to take the lead.

 

“We’re, uh…we’re _together_. You know. Together.” I demonstrated by holding onto Dean’s hand, which he didn’t pull away. 

 

For just a minute or two, there was complete silence in the room. Patricia decided to break it. “I already knew, they told me as soon as they got here. If anyone’s got something to say, go on ahead and say it.”

 

Micah looked troubled, staring at our joined hands and clearly having something to say, but not following Patricia’s instructions. Erica and Lucas looked at each other, a brother and sister obviously considering the stigma of incest, but quickly recovered. “Look, it’s not our place to judge. You’re grown men, you do what you want, it’s nobody’s business unless you want it to be.”

 

Patricia broke into the conversation at that point. “Look, it’s getting late. Lucas, will you show these two down to the old Ramirez place, please? Let them get their car and show them around, and we’ll revisit this in the morning, after Dean and Sam here have had some time to talk, and think. All right?”

 

“Sure thing. I’ll follow you to your car, how far is it?”

 

“Couple of blocks, maybe”, Dean supplied, clearly a bit apprehensive. I touched his shoulder gently. “It’s all right, Dean. Let’s just go, okay?”

 

After another hearty round of hand-shaking and expressions of sincere gratitude, Lucas followed us to the **NotImpala** , even getting into the cluttered backseat, giving us directions to a place three blocks away. We pulled up in front of a tiny house with peeling white shingles and a falling-down fence around the front yard. We grabbed our bags and followed him to the front door as he walked inside and, easy as pie, flicked a switch that flooded the small front room with electric light. “Mr. Ramirez lived here alone, it’s not much of a place, but you’ll have what you need here. The water heater still works, and there’s a bedroom down that way”, he gestured, “and a bathroom just down the hall. Some houses here still have running water, some don’t, depending on the source, but this one does. You can flush the toilet and everything”, he said with a small smile. “You’ll be okay here for the night, and someone will come around tomorrow to see how you’re doing, if you’re still here.

 

I was overcome. Just this small measure of kindness was almost incomprehensible. “Lucas, I can’t tell you how grateful we are for all of this. Thanks so much.”

 

“Yeah, it’s – it’s no problem. Nice to see a new face or two now and then. I’d better get going.” And with that, he was gone, leaving Dean and me alone in this little house, clearly having belonged to someone who was deceased, no telling how recently. 

 

We headed down the hall and, as Lucas had done, touched the light switch in the bedroom. It was still amazing to see a lamp turn on like that after so many months of flashlights and candles. There was a double bed with a nightstand, one closet and a dresser by the bedroom door with a picture of an older Hispanic man surrounded by small children (probably his grandkids, I guessed) at a theme park of some kind. I felt guilty just looking at the photo. Who was this guy? What was his first name? What killed him? What happened to all those kids in the picture, faces covered in ice cream and bliss?

 

We deposited our bags on the floor and went to see the rest of the house. In the hallway between the front door and the bedroom, we found a bathroom with just the basics – toilet, sink, shower stall, tiny linen closet. Behind the living room was a small galley kitchen with a nook beside it just big enough to hold a round wooden table with four old, unmatching chairs. Clearly, nothing had been taken from this house after the previous resident had passed on. There were still a few plates, glasses, pots and pans in the cabinets. The living room held a worn gray sofa, a well-used recliner, a coffee table, a bookshelf filled with mostly western themed novels, and a pretty high-tech stereo system for a guy who looked to be fairly elderly from his picture.

 

“So”, I said, finally breaking the silence that had been following us around the house. “I guess we need to talk about all this, huh?”

 

Dean choked out a small laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we do. It’s a lot to take in, though, you know? It’s not like we came here thinking we’d find people, let alone a whole community taking on a ‘let’s start this whole thing over again’ project.”

 

“I know, but now that we’ve seen it, we know it can be done. At least on a short-term basis. Crowley said some of the folks who were left would find a way to make another go of it, right? Seems like he hasn’t lied to us about anything so far. But this can’t be the only place. There must be others like it.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure there are. And I know how much you want to be a part of something. Anything. There’s lots of stuff we know, Sam, so many things we can do. It’s only been one night, but the people here have been so fucking kind, even after we told them, you know, about…us, about – what we have. If we stay, we could help them as much as they’d be helping us. We’re not just dead weight, we wouldn’t be a drain or anything, and driving aimlessly around the country isn’t going to get us anywhere but more lost than we already are.”

 

For a moment, I just studied the look on Dean’s face. He’d been staring at the wall while he was talking, not looking at me, but I could see it right then more clearly than I’d been able to see it for months. Dean was tired. Not sleep-deprived, but _tired_. To me, it looked like he was done with just wandering, never knowing what the next day or hour would bring. I had always thought I’d get there first, but here I was, wrong again. Dean wanted to stop. 

 

“All right, then. Let’s get a good night of rest, and tomorrow we’ll talk to Patricia about it, maybe Micah, see what really is going on here, what they have planned. And whether or not they really want two more people to join them, though I think it was pretty clear tonight that they might want us to stay.”

 

“Sure, but why? They know nothing about us, not a single damn thing except something that ought to have them booting us out on our asses, we’re brothers who are having sex with each other. That’s _all_ they know.”

 

“But even knowing that, they didn’t boot us out, right? We haven’t got the chance yet to tell them what we can do, the things we know that could help them get by. Maybe that’s another thing Crowley could have been right about, people don’t care about that kind of shit anymore, who’s fucking who, whatever. Things have changed, priorities are different, and I sure haven’t heard a single mention yet about God or the Bible or our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, nothing like that. Hell, for all we know, they could all be atheist by now.”

 

“I don’t know, Sam. You could be right about that. One thing I’m sure you’re right about, we could both use a good night of real live sleep in an actual bed. Lucas said the water heater still works, so we could even take a shower that’s not fucking freezing or even just tepid. I could sure use one, I felt like a hobo sitting at that dinner table full of sparkly-clean people tonight.”

 

“Don’t I know it, man, I felt the same way. You wanna try out that shower stall or what?” I asked, eager to steer away from the heavy discussion. It had been a long night, full of new information that made my body feel as exhausted as my brain. 

 

We had our shower, together, you know, so we could conserve water. And have shower sex. Shower sex never got old. Dean on his knees in front of me, sucking me off while he jerked his own cock under the spray of the water, yeah, I’d never get enough of that. But still. We were _conserving_. Falling into the soft bed of a man who’d lost his life in this shit-show of the current state of the world didn’t help us relax much. I lay behind Dean and held him close, but I could see his eyes dart over to that framed photo of the previous resident and his grandkids more than once. Eventually, though, our fatigue took over and we both slept deeply.

 

We both woke early, Dean before me, and I was surprised to open my eyes and deeply breathe in an aroma I’d almost forgotten. Coffee. Oh my fucking **Whoever** , it had been a long time. I made my way to the kitchen where Dean was pouring us both mugs of what amounted to liquid Heaven. There was no cream or milk to go along with it, no sugar either, but after so much time without it, even I could stand drinking it black. I’d long ago lost hope that I’d ever taste another caramel macchiato or pumpkin-spiced latte. Plain old black coffee was like a freaking miracle. 

 

For about twenty minutes, we sat in silence, shoulders rubbing together as we savored the taste and considered our good fortune that we’d wound up in a place where, if you were lucky, you could still brew yourself a pot of coffee. 

 

Then, there was an interruption. A knock at the door. I set down my mug and went to greet whoever had decided to show up here. It was Patrica, Micah, and another man I hadn’t met. 

 

“Good morning, Sam. You remember Micah, and this is Nate, he’s Max’s father and Amy’s uncle.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Nate. Max and Amy are pretty fantastic kids. Please, come in, all of you. Dean’s made coffee, you want some?”

 

Micah spoke up. “Thanks, but no. We’d like to speak with you two about your intentions, if this is a good time for us to have that conversation.”

 

“No time like the present, Micah”, Sam replied. “One thing I learned from the end of the world.” He and I shared a wry smile at that, and Patricia and Nate nodded in response.

 

Within a few minutes, all five of us were sitting in the living room. Dean, Patricia and Micah were on the sofa, Nate took the recliner, and I just sat on the floor below Dean, his hand warm and comforting on my shoulder, my legs crossed and head leaning back into his touch.

 

Dean was the one who got the real conversation going. “I think we’d like to stay here, if you’ll have us. We wouldn’t be a drain or anything. I know how to fix cars and most electronics, and I used to work construction, so I can build things. I’ve got something to contribute. Lots of experience with standing guard, sensing when there’s something around that shouldn’t be. Sam here went to college. _Stanford_ , on a full scholarship, he’s wicked smart (I felt my cheeks redden as I instinctively dipped my head a bit at the praise). Plus, he’s got experience in treating traumatic injuries. No formal medical training, but he can set a fracture and stitch up wounds like a pro. And he can pick- uh, he picks up new things really quickly”. Good save, as he was clearly about to brag about my lock-picking skills, which might not have gone over too well.

 

At this point, Nate finally spoke. “And how is it that the two of you came to learn all of these things? It’s an interesting skill set for men your age.”

 

I decided that since we weren’t hiding anything else, there was no point hiding that either. “We were hunters, before. Our mom was killed by a demon when we were little, and our dad raised us to learn all of this. Dean and me, and our Dad, before he died ( _yeah, he passed away tragically, not like he sold his soul for Dean’s life_ ), traveled across the country for years hunting down supernatural creatures, trying to save people. I know that might sound completely insane-”

 

All three sets of eyes were taking in what I had said, their confusion and disbelief clear on their faces. 

 

“Supernatural hunters?” asked Patricia, her eyebrows raised in speculation, her voice low and almost reverent. “I’d heard there were some out there, never met any though, so far as I know. There’s always been stories, you know, mostly among the Native American part of our town, spirits and all that…some people thought it was all made up but lots of us suspected there was at least some truth to it.”

 

Before I could even respond, Nate posed his own question. “Is that what happened? Something we thought wasn’t real? Is that why everything-”

 

“No”, I replied, absolutely sure of myself for once. “This was people, just regular people who made a wrong move and started things going downhill. I know all of us have lost a lot, but it seems like the folks here in Page want to make an honest effort to start over again, not to give in to the sadness, and Dean and I”, for a second I glanced up at him, “well, we want the same thing. We want to live. The world might have changed but there are still a few of us here to appreciate what’s left and make an attempt to do what we can with what we’ve got, to hold on and figure out a way to make new lives. That’s what we want too.”

 

In response, Nate said “Yeah, I guess it was more likely for us to get knocked down this far by our own, I never considered anything otherworldly could have caused this, except God. None of us have much religious faith anymore, hopefully that’s not offensive.”

 

“Everyone we’ve met so far has been fairly tolerant of our relationship”, I said, demonstrating by placing my hand over Dean’s where it was rested on the right side of my neck, not moving. “So yeah, my guess was that there wasn’t enough religious presence here after we didn’t get shot in the face or run out of town on a rail as a result of disclosing the…” it was hard for me to say the word, even now, “incestuous nature of what Dean and I have together.”

 

_Cause they don’t know about us  
and they never heard of love_

 

Micah was the next person to speak, though he still looked uncomfortable, probably due to my boldness in using the real term that described my relationship with Dean. “You’re both adults, you make your own decisions. No one here judges anyone else unless they’re putting us in danger. Whatever people get up to in their bedroom is just not important to us. Except in one way.”

 

Dean and I both looked a bit confused at this. “Which way would that be, exactly?” Dean asked, sounding a little apprehensive. 

 

“Here’s the cold truth, guys. We’ve got a tiny fraction of the population left. There is the practical matter of increasing those numbers that has to be taken into consideration. There are still twenty four women here in town who are of child-bearing age, nine more who will be in the next couple of years, and who are more than happy to create new life, start building the population again. I realize that the two of you are _together_ , but if you want to stay, it would be a big help if you’d consider assisting us in that aspect.”

 

I can’t even imagine the looks on our faces, but it must have been something like ‘horrified’ because Patricia decided to jump in and explain further. “Look, we’re not just _breeding_ people like animals, pairing people up against their will, nothing like that. When Micah said ‘child bearing age’, he didn’t mean we’re trying to get girls knocked up as soon as they hit puberty. If we end up with teenagers who get pregnant because they’re involved sexually with someone their own age by mutual consent, we’re not going to complain about it. But we’re talking about grown women, all older than twenty one, who have a genuine desire to bear children, both because they want their own kids and because they want to help grow the population. Get a start on bringing the human race back from near extinction, you know? And the married couples who are still left, the ones who are able, are all trying to have more children.”

 

After a minute, I composed myself enough to respond. “I understand. I do, honestly. Surely there are people here who have lost children or spouses, maybe both, and they want to have more kids. And it’s a valid concern. We ran into an old…well, someone we used to know a while back. He told us that what’s left now is well under a quarter of the entire earth’s population before all this started. It might be kind of difficult for us – I know it’s unconventional but Dean and I are committed to each other, faithful.” I wasn’t sure how to continue, but Dean led the way.

 

“If it’s all right, maybe you could give us some work to do for now, so we can show you that we’re capable of earning our keep around here. And just maybe let us have a little bit of time to think that over. Would that be okay?”

 

_This is only the beginning for you_  
So take some time to think it over running through  
This could only end in trouble for you  
So take some time to think it over 

 

“Of course”, Nate replied, looking a little uncomfortable about the whole subject. Maybe he was thinking about his niece, not too far from ‘childbearing age’ herself. “Take all the time you need with that. Meanwhile, Dean, we’re trying to repair several homes that were damaged in a fire a few weeks ago. You could give us a hand with that. And Sam, survival skills aren’t the only things we want the children here to know, though they do obviously need to learn those too. We have one teacher but she could definitely use a hand. We’ve still got a school and a bunch of kids who need to learn how to read and write, how to do math, need to learn about history and literature. None of us think those things are lost, it’s important to us for the children to be educated. The only way to move forward. And maybe we can call on you for help when we’ve got an injury to treat? There’s one lady here in town who was an LPN before all this, but an extra hand is always appreciated. Is that a good way to start?”

 

Relieved, I responded, “Yes, of course, I’d love to help with teaching the kids, and anything else.” Dean followed closely with his own response. “Whatever help you need, tearing down, building, wiring, plumbing, I’m happy to do any of it.”

 

The men excused themselves, but Patricia stayed. “I thought you might have more questions, so fire away if there’s anything you want to know. And I’d like to get to know the two of you a little better as well.”

 

I was the first to jump on that invitation. “I hope it’s not disrespectful, but we’re staying here in this house, and again, thank you for allowing us to stay here, but this place belonged to someone else – would you mind telling us a little about him?”

 

“Victor Ramirez. He’d been widowed for years, but he lived here, and went out on the train to visit his kids and grandkids in California a couple times a year. Used to work for the city sanitation department before he retired. Three months ago, he got pneumonia. Didn’t tell anyone he was sick until it was really bad, and by that time all of our doctors were either dead or had left town. Our nurse did the best she could, but he was old and too far gone.”

 

Dean asked the exact question I knew he was going to ask. “We saw a picture, in the bedroom. His family. Is there anyone left?”

 

“One of his daughters and three of the grandkids. Nate found the address and drove out there to tell them Victor passed, and they followed him back, we buried him here. I wish I knew more, but there’s just no way to communicate over long distances. Hopefully they’re all right. I heard there was a bad West Nile outbreak out that way.”

 

“We heard the same thing”, Dean replied. “Even came here with a bunch of cans of bug spray, in case it was spreading.”

 

“If y’all wouldn’t mind, could we keep those over at the school? We could make sure the kids are covered if it looks like that’s coming our way.”

 

“Of course. Anything we’ve got is yours, whatever you think you might need, though admittedly we don’t have much.”

 

“You’ve got a car with fuel in it. Weapons, though hopefully they won’t be needed except for hunting. For food, I mean. Plus, knowledge and a willingness to work. They’re all valuable resources. Everything here is shared, honestly, it’s the only way for us to get by. And now I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”

 

“Ask away”, I replied, and I really meant it. No point in hiding anything now, we’d already laid every card we had out on the table. 

 

“You said you heard things from someone you used to know. About the population, about the virus in California. Was that another hunter, like you two were?”

 

Aw, shit. This one was going to be hard to explain. Dean, fortunately, found his voice and started. “Not a hunter, but someone we knew from our old life. A demon. King of Hell, if you can believe that.” He recognized the look of terror on her face and continued. “We’ve had dealings with him in the past, and surprisingly enough, he’s helped us more than a few times. Seems he’s got kind of a fondness for Sam and me. He doesn’t mean any harm to anyone, not anyone topside anyway, I can tell you that with absolute certainty. He was bored and decided to pop in on us a while back, but we haven’t seen him since, and we haven’t seen anything else, either. No monsters, spirits, not anything a single thing that we used to hunt. I have a feeling they’re all either gone or in hiding, at least on a temporary basis.”

 

“But if he could ‘pop in’ on you then, he could do the same here”, she responded, looking wary. “If you’re saying you might be bringing a demon along with you…”

 

I stopped her there. “First of all, Dean was telling the truth, this guy has his job but his hands are pretty full at the moment. And even if he did decide to show up, I am absolutely certain at this point that he wouldn’t do anything destructive. Like Dean said, he’s got kind of a soft spot for us, and I think he’s rooting for the human race to pull through this, if only because he’s a bit sentimental.”

 

“ _Sentimental?_ A sentimental demon? Honestly? You expect me to believe that?” Her voice had become hard and suspicious. I didn’t blame her, and I told her as much.

 

“Yes, and I know it’s hard to believe, but he hasn’t lied to us about anything, and we haven’t lied to you about anything, even things we thought might have you chasing us out of town with pitchforks and torches. Please believe me, Patricia”, I pleaded.

 

“All right, you know the thing, and you’re right, both of you have been completely honest from the start, so I have no reason to doubt you. You have to promise me, though, if this demon makes an appearance here in Page, you’ll tell me or Micah or someone **immediately**. Promise me that.”

 

“No arguments there, if we get even the scent of him or anything else like him, we’ll let you know. But like Dean said, he’s got a full agenda of his own that has nothing to do with people who are still alive. Anything else that’s supernatural, too, if we get wind of it we’ll tell you right away, I swear. It’s the honest truth, we haven’t run into a single supernatural creature in months, other than our brief run-in with this demon. Even then, he just showed up to give us some useful information, all of which has turned out to be true.”

 

Patricia shook her head. “This is so surreal. Meeting people who have actually dealt with these kinds of things, things most of us thought were all made-up stories. You honestly don’t believe there’s anything to fear as far as all that goes?”

 

“I can’t promise it will be like that forever”, Dean told her, “but for right now, yeah, it seems like the angels and demons and monsters are pretty much gone, even if they’re just hiding out temporarily.”

 

That one word, the one Dean hadn’t even meant to say, was what caught Patricia’s attention. “Angels? You mean like – _angels_?”

 

Now we were heading into tough territory, and I could see Dean’s eyes cloud over with grief as soon as he realized what he’d said. “Yeah. The two of us have experienced a lot over the past few years. They’re long stories, and maybe we can tell you about them someday, but both of us have been to Hell, and to Heaven. We’ve met angels who were stone cold killers, and demons who volunteered to help us. Dean ate pizza with Death, yeah, the horseman, Death, and I walked around without a soul for more than a year. Over the course of it, we lost our Dad, our best friends, just about everyone we ever knew or cared about. So, yeah, we can do lots of things to help you folks out here, now, but we’ve got more emotional baggage than your average Joe. Or, you know, Joes.”

 

She took a moment or two just to absorb all I’d said – I couldn’t imagine what it would be like when I got the chance to tell her any more than the Cliff’s Notes version – then just nodded and said, “Seems like you came out the other side of all that, even with everything that’s happened, more well-adjusted than most. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.”

 

Dean replied, “I know that’s what it looks like. And you’re right, maybe growing up in the life prepared us for all of it more than if we hadn’t, but I wouldn’t call either of us ‘well-adjusted’, maybe we’re just making the best of it. All me and Sam ever had was each other, really, and we’ve still got each other, even now, so I guess we’re grateful for that small mercy.”

 

“All right. I think we’ve talked about this enough for now, you both seem exhausted just from the conversation, and we don’t need exhausted. We need two men who are ready to give us a hand around here. You ready for that?”

 

Dean and I looked at each other. “Yeah”, I said, “we are. We’re ready. We want to help. Show us where to go, what to do, and let us be a part of what you’re doing here. Please.”

 

For the first time since the conversation began, Patricia gave us a genuine smile. “Now that, I can do. Let’s get started.”

 

The next few weeks were a blur. Dean got home at the end of every day exhausted, muscles aching, dirty, and feeling satisfied, like he’d accomplished something. The fire-damaged buildings were being repaired more quickly with his help, and he’d gotten along well with the other men he’d been working with. The teacher, Alice, was happy to have my help with the kids, and getting a chance to teach kids about history and math and literature was a wonderful experience. I’d only been called on once by the nurse, to perform a closed reduction on a wrist fracture for a six year old who’d fallen off her bike. They had a limited supply of medication, and that was a blessing, because I could give her a half-dose of hydrocodone and let it work its way through her system before I set the bone. My usual pain-killing method of handing the injured person (Dean or our Dad or another hunter) a bottle of booze wouldn’t have gone over too well, and as far as either of us had seen, no one here in Page drank alcohol. 

 

At some point within our first week there, we’d unpacked our bags and put our clothing away in the dresser drawers. We were making ourselves at home in this tiny house.

 

After two weeks, I fished the plastic Army man from the Impala out of the pocket of one of my jackets and stood him up on the nightstand next to the bed. Dean recognized it for what it was, and I knew he wasn’t exactly sure what to say. 

 

“Sam. Oh, fuck, Sam is that…it is, isn’t it?” His eyes filled with tears, and I did the only thing I could do – put my arms around him and let my own tears fall. 

 

“Nothing wrong with us keeping something we had from before, right?”

 

He just nodded against my shoulder and let me hold onto him.

 

Eventually, though, the whole ‘child-bearing’ topic had come up again. Nate came to us with an idea, and we were willing to hear him out, even though we knew if he suggested that either of us would be intimate with someone else, the answer would be **no**. 

 

“I think I’ve worked out a way you might be able to help us with this without breaking the commitment you have to each other”, he said, sounding way less uncomfortable about it than he and others had been when we first arrived. People just accepted the relationship Dean and I had, some more quickly than others, but there hadn’t been even one negative remark made to either of us, no homophobic slurs, no accusations about sinning or incest or anything like that. We’d both expected to have to deal with at least some backlash, but if anyone had an objection to us being together, they kept it to themselves, or at least never said it to our faces. “I talked to the nurse, and if you’re willing to, uh…donate…well, you know, if you’re agreeable to contribute your, um, your part, we’re fairly certain that the old tried and true turkey baster method might be effective.” He was blushing and not looking at either of us as he spoke. This was clearly not an easy conversation for him, but the ends justified the means, so he was suffering through it. “You wouldn’t have to know which kids were yours, if you didn’t want to. Does that sound like something you’d be willing to do?”

 

Dean and I had a silent conversation, words unnecessary, before he answered for both of us. “More than happy, Nate. And I’m fairly certain that we would know, at least eventually, which ones were ours. Helping to raise kids that we made isn’t something we’re opposed to. Neither of us ever thought we’d have any kids, honestly, but as long as it’s understood that the two of us aren’t open to romantic or sexual relationships with other people, I have no doubt that Sam would agree we’d want to have a hand in taking responsibility for any children we helped to create, regardless of the circumstances.”

 

“He’s right, I do agree. We’ll do our part, and if it turns out that our sperm makes a baby, both of us will do everything we can to help any child who’s born as a result. Like we talked about before, we need more people, and if there are women who are willing to go through gestation and childbirth, we’re more than willing to give our support to them and to children who are biologically mine or Dean’s. You just tell us when, and we’re there.”

 

Nate sighed in relief. “I hope you both know what it means to our community that you’d agree to this. Hell, you do enough to take care of the other kids here, that much is obvious. I’m not surprised that you’d want to be involved with one of your own. Of course, we all see the two of you as part of the community now. You do know _that_ , right?”

 

“Yeah”, Dean responded. “We feel that way too. Taking us in and letting us be a part of what’s happening here, we can’t ever thank you enough for that.”

 

“Hey, don’t act like the folks here just hustled you in like orphans. Both of you have done so much to help in our efforts to start a new life here. Dean, you just repaired a roof yesterday that kept an elderly woman from having to abandon the house she grew up in. And Sam, last week you taught more than a dozen kids what the solar system looks like. You were right the first time we talked, you’re not dead weight. We’re all helping each other here, that’s what matters.”

 

And Nate was right about that. What really mattered was that Dean and I, for the first time in our lives, were part of a real live community, not a network of hunters, not a here-and-gone connection of angels and demons (who, by the way, had still not shown up, not anywhere around here anyway), but a real community, something we could benefit from and contribute to at the same time. It was shocking how easily we’d made the transition from a lifetime of wandering to putting down roots in a place where we made a difference, no matter how small, on a day to day basis. Neither of us could have hoped for anything better than this, especially after living through what was supposed to be the end of the whole damn world, even after living through what we’d experienced before that. 

 

A year later, there were seventy people in Page. One of them was Dean’s daughter, a tiny newborn baby her mother had named Hope. She wasn’t a Winchester by name, but she was by blood. We’d been wrong when we’d assumed the Winchester line would end with us. This little girl was a continuation of our family, and she’d have a cousin soon. No way to know if my child would be a boy or a girl, but it didn’t matter. 

 

There was a happy vibe winding its way through our new home, the whole town thrumming with joy about the upcoming marriage of a young couple, both barely into their twenties but so obviously in love. As every member of the community gathered to celebrate the wedding, Dean and I sat together on a bench in the backyard of one of the larger houses in town while people danced and laughed and celebrated. Max and Amy ran around with the other children, swiping pieces of cake and playing hide-and-seek. 

 

Patricia sat down next to us in the early evening hours, and we talked about how much had happened in the past year. The growth of new crops, the few more folks who’d come across the town and decided to stay, the avoidance of West Nile with insect repellant and mosquito netting, the children who’d learned to read and write, the homes and public buildings that had been repaired and renewed. There had even been a few people who’d passed through and given us news of other towns, other groups of people doing the same thing we were doing. Not much progress yet on methods of communication, but people were working on it. And the lights were still on. People still conserved, only used as much electricity as was absolutely necessary, and food was still carefully rationed (but not today, this was not a day for holding back). 

 

We’d become especially close with her since we’d arrived. She told us that she’d never been married or had any children of her own. Eventually, she knew just about all there was to know about Dean and me, more than anyone else knew. I’d told her about Lucifer, the fight at Stull, the hallucinations I’d suffered later. Dean, surprisingly enough, one night in the middle of a poker game at her kitchen table, told her about Castiel, how he’d been Dean’s closest friend and then betrayed him, coming back just long enough to beg for Dean’s forgiveness before he was gone again. 

 

Tonight, though, there was no talk of heartbreak or loss, just optimism and a feeling of good things waiting for all of us. We were all finally feeling like we really did have a chance to start over again. After sitting in silence for a while, she brought up an idea of her own.

 

“You know, if you wanted, you could have this too.”

 

Dean laughed. “A wedding? Come on, Patricia, I know people have been tolerant, but there’s got to be a line somewhere. Brian might be able to perform ceremonies, but we’d never ask someone to do that for us. We’re grateful enough for what we have.”

 

I gave him a look, you know, a _look_ , and added my own two cents. “If he wasn’t opposed to it, though, Brian (Page’s only surviving city official) could do that for us, I guess. Making all our own new rules now and all.” 

 

Dean just fixed me with a serious gaze, and Patricia graciously excused herself. “You’d want that?” he asked me, with a stunned look in his eyes. “To get married? To me?”

 

At that point I knew I was blushing, and I couldn’t meet his eyes as I responded. “Um…yeah. Yeah, actually, I would. Maybe Brian won’t do it, maybe he would, I don’t know, and it’s not like it would really change anything, but”, I took a deep breath and continued, “I’d like to be married to you. To wear a ring and make it official. I know it shouldn’t make a difference, but sure, it would be nice. I’ve thought about it once or twice, especially since we found out there was going to be a wedding.” God, I sounded like a gigantic girl, and just waited for Dean to say as much, but he didn’t. 

 

“So, you’re saying you’d marry me?”

 

“Uh-huh.” I finally gathered the strength to look right at him. “Yeah, I would. Definitely.”

 

“Do I have to ask you? Like, you know, propose or something?”

 

“You just did”, I responded, kissing him gently on the cheek, “after I’d already said yes.” Then I elbowed him in the ribs to take the edge off the sappiness that was oozing out all over the place.

 

_I promise to sing to you_  
When all the music dies  
And marry me  
Today and everyday 

 

“Let’s go talk to him, then.”

 

A month later, it was our turn. Dean’s infant daughter and her mother, Kaitlyn, were standing next to Elizabeth, who was ready to deliver a child conceived with my seed any day. As our magistrate spoke decidedly secular words about the bonds of marriage, the commitment, forsaking all others, I felt my tears welling up and slid a plain solid band onto Dean’s finger just after he’d done the same to me.

 

After all we’d been through, it turned out that it wasn’t the end of the world, after all. It was the beginning. For all of us.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone’s curious, the song lyrics I sprinkled throughout this fic are as follows, in order of appearance:
> 
> End Of The World As We Know It – REM
> 
> Do I Disappoint You? – Rufus Wainwright
> 
> Cigarettes – The Wreckers
> 
> Ridin’ The Storm Out – REO Speedwagon
> 
> Long May You Run – Neil Young (and oh how I cried while I wrote that part of the story)
> 
> Come On Get Higher – Matt Nathanson
> 
> O Death – Ralph Stanley
> 
> Anything For Love – Meatloaf
> 
> Don’t Fear The Reaper – Blue Oyster Cult
> 
> Tears In Heaven – Eric Clapton
> 
> Sleep – Poets of the Fall
> 
> They Don’t Know – Tracey Ullman
> 
> Think It Over – Powderfinger
> 
> Marry Me - Train


End file.
